It is well known that small children, that is children such as from the age when they may sit by themselves (about 6-7 month) until they master sitting safely in a children's chair without falling out (about 2 years), need harnesses securing them sitting safely in children's chairs.
Often, conventional harnesses are used, such as those accompanying a children's pram, a children's chair of which may be bought separately. In new children's chairs the harnesses are often anchored by straps on each side of the seat in integrated fastening means, such as eyes or similar. Such harnesses have the disadvantage that they require integrated fastening means in the chair and also hinder the child in turning the upper body to the side because the straps on each side of the harness must be relative short. This short length of the straps is to secure that the child sits safely in the chair, but this hinders and generally irritates the child.
In later years, a development has evolved in the direction of more countries and regions having their own safety requirements and regulations for equipment to be used for children, such as for children's chairs and harnesses. This must continuously be taken into account in the development of new children's chairs, but it may be difficult to adapt chairs which have been produced for a long time, before such safety regulations were put into force. It is especially difficult to perform such adaptation without making physical interventions in the chairs.
This is for example the case with the Tripp Trapp® children's chair which was developed as early as in 1972 and patented in 1976 and which still is a very popular children's chair in many countries.
The chair is designed to be adjusted in coherence with the growing body size of the child and therefore has a seat plate and a foot plate which may be moved into different height positions by gliding into tracks distributed upward along the length of the side pieces and being locked by tightening the distance between the side pieces. The sitting plate may further be adjusted in the depth position by the plate being pushed in and out (forward and backward) in relation to the back rest, and thereby providing the child using the chair, a correct seat length under the thighs.
It has proven difficult to adapt existing seats to new effective requirements, especially in order to retain the above-mentioned original functions of the chair. In order to achieve this, the fastening or fasteners for a children's harness should be able to follow the height position of the seat.
In addition to fastening a harness to such chairs, it may also be desirable to be able to mount a children's seating rail, which either may be used alone or simultaneously with the harness.
It is a further objective to provide a fastening means for this additional equipment so that also owners of older chairs may upgrade their chairs. As mentioned, it is also an objective to avoid physical intervention in the chair, such as making holes in any of the parts or inserting screws that leave spoiling marks in the chair, which will be visible when there no longer is use for the children's equipment. Moreover, such adaptations involve a risk of the user making adaptations in the wrong manner, and that the safety is not kept intact. It is therefore an objective of the invention to make the fastening of the children's equipment as intuitive and simple as possible, and upholding the safety at the same time.
NO 323899/WO 2007/097637, Peter Opsvik AS, shows a fastening bracket for use in a seat plate with a vertical hole in a children's chair of the type mentioned above. The bracket comprises a fastening means with a slit for placing on the underside of the seat plate, and a lining clip with vertical locking pegs which are guided through the hole in the seat plate from the top side and which is locked on the top side of the seat plate by a flange which is larger than the hole. The locking pegs have horizontal holes wherein a locking pin is inserted for locking the fastening device to the lining clips on the underside of the seat plate. The fastening device may in addition comprise an edge slit protruding in front of the seat plate for insertion of a part of a children's seating rail.
In order to secure that the fastening of equipment as mentioned above is carried out in a correct manner, and that it is intuitive, it is a further objective to limit the number of parts to reduce the possibility for such parts being installed wrongly. A few number of parts also reduces the possibility for individual parts to be lost during storage of the equipment, such as in-between periods when the equipment is not used, for later to be brought out when for example the next child is grown enough to sit in a children's chair. In such periods, there is also the chance that the original user guide disappears.
Faulty installation is often a consequence of the user not reading the user guide or not understanding the user guide, it may be that the language and/or the illustrations for installation are difficult to understand, or that the user guide has disappeared. It is therefore an objective to reduce the possibility of installing the equipment in a manner that seemingly may be perceived as correct for the consumer, or as a possible alternative installation manner, but which in use will not tolerate the loads that the equipment is meant to be exposed to.
Further, it is an objective to obtain a fastening device which is small, discrete and less bothersome for the user, both physically and ecstatically. At the same time, such a fastening device should not protrude outside of the outer edges of the chair both to hinder that it absorbs impact and is damaged if the chair for example is tipped over and to allow a cushion with a pocket in the frontal edge to be installed in the chair, wherein the pocket is thread over the entire front edge of the chair.